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Old 07-13-2016, 11:22 AM
Xenoith Xenoith is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 56
Xenoith has a little shameless behaviour in the past
Zodiac - Save or Shut Down?

So Zodiac has been an ongoing server for many years, but the player count has been dwindling vastly. From 5 to 10 people daily. The server has fallen into atrophy and any means to communicate with Ketsomaru, Fowlplay4 or Raven613 have been since abolished. However Ketsomaru I will give the benefit of the doubt as he's "trying" but he's only one person. I believe the server is in need of new scriptwriters/gani artist and an overall team. There's been a staffing change and the rules haven't been updated in I wanna say almost years now?

The server as a whole has the potential to be great, but the problem with that is the development is still in 2001's phase. Where the constant need to grind for an item exist. Now I am not saying that's not the case, but in most modern MMO's from 2013 to now in 2016 have improved their farming systems to alleviate it for newer players.

Zodiac has a dashed history of not having the friendliest playerbase which is a given in any game. There will always be bad eggs, but the problem lies with the disconnection of Staff to Player communication. We have no way to contact them directly, and any attempt to make a communication with the staff is met with something along the lines of, "They don't want X to have their info." or "Haven't seen him/her log on in x days." "Where is the manager." That sort of thing. I had previously brought up this topic on Zodiac before and in my honest opinion I think the server "should" be shut down and have management reassigned else where and have it worked on like N-Pulse currently is.

Delteria being a clear example of a good rework. Zodiac could learn something from that servers example as it's kept a steady playerbase since it's relaunch and the good reviews for it from friends and the actual visual updates on the GraalOnline login hub makes it stand out from it's other servers. Another server that Zodiac could learn from is Era, who has been pumping out updates almost every week. I think their last update was actually the 6th of this month. Zodiac sparingly see's updates unless the community literally is flaming the staff to the point of where they will fix the problem, if it means the hate comments will stop.

Here's an example of Era's update log. Compared to Zodiac. These are the last 5 updates.

Era
Tuesday, June 28th 2016 (1 Update)
Monday, June 27 2016 (2 Updates)
Saturday, June 25th 2016 (1 Update)
Friday, June 24th 2016 (1 Update)
Friday, June 17th 2016 (1 Update)

Days between Updates
17-24 = 7
24-25 = 0
25-27 = 1
27-28 = 0
Total: 8 Days

Zodiac
July 12th, 2016
June 29th, 2016
June 27th, 2016
June 23rd, 2016
June 21st, 2016

21-23 = 2
23-27 = 4
27-29 = 2
29-12 = 13
Total: 21 Days

Now I am not saying devs should be pumping content. Most of the updates are just balance/QoL/PvE changes. However what I am pointing out is the inconsistent times between updates. We don't know when they're coming even as nothing is even hinted on the forums about it and we have no feedback from the admins on why these changes happen. They just happen.

If we had a more consistent staff team I think Zodiac could pull itself out of the rut it's in now. But from the looks of it, 2016 is looking rather bleak for the classic RPG server.

I'd like to hear your feedback on this MysticalDragon as well as some of the other staff from Era too. Thanks.
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